Climate & Peace Dispatch With Samson Shabu - Building Blocks for Peace

Download the full Interview here.

The interview highlights how climate change and insecurity in West Africa reinforce one another, creating a cycle that deepens fragility, undermines livelihoods, and fuels local instability. Climate pressures interact with poverty, weak governance, and insecurity to intensify competition over land and water, drive displacement, and increase farmer–herder tensions across the Sahel, the Lake Chad Basin, and coastal West Africa. Environmental stress also creates opportunities for armed groups to exploit local grievances and governance gaps, further weakening community resilience.

Drawing from field experience, the interview emphasises that communities are often the first responders to climate-security risks. In areas with limited state presence, local populations rely on traditional mediation structures, community dialogue platforms, and informal agreements to manage disputes over natural resources before they escalate into violence. Communities also adapt their livelihoods in response to climate and insecurity pressures through migration, water-harvesting practices, and alternative income-generating activities. These coping strategies demonstrate strong local resilience, even when they generate new environmental or social pressures.

The interview also outlines how Building Blocks for Peace integrates CPS risks into its programming through conflict-sensitive climate adaptation, youth engagement, community-based resilience initiatives, and early-warning systems.

At the same time, it highlights persistent challenges, including fragmented climate and conflict data, weak coordination between environmental, development, and security actors, and limited funding for long-term monitoring and local early-warning mechanisms. While governments and regional organisations such as ECOWAS increasingly recognise climate change as a threat multiplier, implementation remains uneven due to institutional constraints, political instability, and siloed governance approaches.

The interview concludes that stronger regional coordination, sustained investment in community-based resilience, and more inclusive decision-making processes will be essential to addressing climate-security risks across West Africa.